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Friday, August 17, 2012

Article 5

With the resumption of college, I find myself struggling to keep our blog afloat. Yet, it is critically important for me to document as many moments as possible of this journey. This is the journey to
bring a new child into our family. It is one that I do not want to forget.

I am not a huge proponent of spiritual warfare, attacks from Satan, etc. I hear this often and dismiss it. Yet, I cannot deny what we've been through since returning from Bulgaria. All of us became sick within 48 hours of our return. Chelsea improved quickly, but Jon and I remained ill for two weeks. The same week, our cat of 15 years had to be put to sleep when his kidneys failed. It was so sudden and shocking. There are dozens of little examples of drama, issues, and whatnot. I don't claim to stand firmly on the "attacks from Satan" mountain, but our eyebrows are ever-so-slightly raised.

On July 27th, our I800 application was provisionally approved by USCIS. We received the written confirmation a few days after we returned from Bulgaria. Yesterday, our facilitator in Bulgaria received our approved Article 5 letter. This means we have done all we need, by the US Government's standards, to prove we are appropriate adoptive parents and that our future son is eligible, by US law, to be adopted and become a US citizen. The rest of this process lies with Bulgaria, the Ministry of Justice, and the courts. A signature, a court date, and a waiting period are all that stand in the way. This sounds like a small amount of work, but it equates to many more weeks of waiting.

As the moment grows closer, I think often of our future son's culture and family. He doesn't realize it yet, but there is a finite period of time that he will remain in his birth country, with the Baba he knows, and an orphan. He is not an orphan in the classic sense of that word. He has a birthmother, and presumably, a birth family. No father is listed on his birth information. We have asked (and continue to wait for) any word of his birth mother's name, or the names of his siblings. The information contained in his physical file in the orphanage was mixed with another child's when the MOJ began investigating his orphanage earlier this year. We want to preserve this information if we can. It is of critical importance for him to know about his past, should he want to know. We will be the only reasonable link to that information for him.

Once the court date happens, there will be a 14 day period of waiting until the judgment is finalized. His birth mother is listed as mentally ill. I do not know if this is true. Will she know that her biological child is being adopted? Does she care? Neither she, nor any member of his family, has ever been documented as visiting him. Surely, someone must remember him. Maybe someday,we will know these answers.

Meanwhile, we continue to pray and prepare for his arrival. We have lovingly nicknamed him "The Bulgarian Devil" (a play on The Tazmanian Devil) because, just as the Tazmanian Devil is disruptive and a swirl of activity, so is he. Before someone cuts and pastes this line and uses it entirely out of context, we smile at this reference. He is a little boy and is quite different from our daughter in a myriad of ways. Some of those stem from his needs, others from institutionalization, and some because of his gender. Regardless, we embrace him. We asked for him. He will disrupt our lives in countless ways - and that is exactly what we wanted!

Please continue to pray for his orphanage, for him, and for our family. We are hopeful that more children will find their families from this place. We pray we are prepared and ready for him when the moment finally comes. We pray that our daughter adjusts quickly to her brother and that our future son's needs can be well met in our family. We have done little else during this time except prepare; financially, emotionally, spiritually. We're going to yet ANOTHER adoption class at the end of September to focus on attachment and institutionalization. There is so such thing as "too much information" when you are doing something THIS big!